Rack Attack

I hate chaotic storage. When things have a home, they find their way back to the home more easily. And that makes packing for next adventure that much quicker. My latest struggle has been fly rods. I seem to have accumulated several and haven't had an especially good storage solution. For the past couple of years, they've been stacked in storage tubes on my ski rack in the basement. Invariably the rod I want is piled under three others and pulling it our results in an avalanche.

I'd looked at a few storage rack systems, but never really found anything I liked. Horizontal racks eat wall space, don't hold much, and don't help you deal with rods in tubes. I found a few that would store rods in tubes vertically, but they were poorly built, didn't hold much, and were WAY too pricey. Fortunately, with a well-equipped woodshop and some background building furniture I knew I'd stumble upon a solution. My own ideas were really unnecessarily complex. Then I saw a rod rack at Cabelas that gave me the idea. Using some spare 3/4" plywood and some 1" dowels, I was able to build the perfect solution (at right). And fortunately, the local hardware store had some hole saws on clearance in the sizes I didn't have already.

Most standard rods fit fine in a 2-3/4" hole, but I was able to cut some larger 3-1/4" spots for my switch rod and some others that needed more room. And my trusty Scott S3 8-wt. in its aluminum tube got a better-fitting 2-1/4" berth. I was even able to accomodate the odd oval case for my centerpin rod by cutting two holes never to each other and finishing with a sabre saw.

I clamped top and bottom boards together to ensure perfectly-placed top and bottom guide holes. Also, I added a piece of 1/4" pegboard underneath to keep them up off the floor and ventilated. Some screw-on rubber feet and two coats of high-quality enamel and it's ready to go.

I'm very pleased with the solution. Everything has a slot, there's room for expansion should I acquire more rods in the future, and the finished product is plenty rigid. Far better (for me) than anything I could have purchased and WAY cheaper!

-Sean-